During my tenure in the classroom, I wrote a grant for the Colonial Williamsburg History Kits (starting page 6), and now they’re sitting in my office in the cabinet. Would you like to borrow them? They’re collecting dust!
Also, there are two paper making kits for borrowing.
I also have Primary Source Discs (page 4), Story Telling discs, Wood spinning kits, and other goodies for your use. Please let me know if you want to see them!
School should be for preparing students for the work force and careers, right?
School should be a “boot camp” for career choices, and students should leave high school ready to segue into jobs, true?
If you agree with me, you probably are one step ahead of me: where are all the yearly standardized tests in businesses that each employee must take? Performance reviews in the business world are exactly that: performance reviews. While we all have our opinions on standardized tests (called SOLs in Virginia) and the resulting stress each end-of-year/subject test produces for students and employees alike, that is for another conversation. What I wish to point out is that many businesses today have technology integrated with many aspects of their daily “lives”. For example:
• many have cut travel expenses by having virtual meetings
• Some have gone on Second Life
• Some have virtual meetings or teleconferences
How can we start preparing our students and selves for 21st Century learning? It starts with us. Some examples I can think of:
• One of our local elementaries (Westhaven), instead of turning lesson plans in on paper to share with their teammates, turn their lesson plans in to the principal and grade group via a school Wiki.
• Imagine if your grade groups planned via the Portsmouth Public SchoolsNing? No more fret about who will pick up the children at Day Care!
• Need to plan a unit together? Do it virtually and via chat on MyWebspiration.
• We (John Tyler via Qlubb and Olive Branch via the web) sign up for the COW virtually—this is a start
The reader may think, “This is all good, but how does this prepare my class for the Test?”
The best example happened last week in Mrs. Diddle’s room (this is the day of lots of bullets!):
• Students researched on line and took notes on index cards. Graphics were saved to Word and saved on the H drive to the class folder.
• Since the printer on the Mobile cart was not working, I taught students how to find a printer on the network and print to that. Not ONE child got lost. Learning continued uninterrupted because technology was used as a resource for a class learning project.
• The point? The students’ ease in using technology wisely was natural for them. In fact, their enthusiasm–for what could have been a VERY boring project—was heightened.
So, are your students begging for their learning styles to be used more in your classes? Could this enthusiasm result in a heightened passion for the subject you teach, and as a result, the SOL test will seem easy? I’ve seen multiple examples recently of intensive learning, and FUN learning, in classrooms. Not only was technology being used, but characteristics of the teachers were the same in each as written in Highly Qualified for Successful Teaching: Characteristics Every Teacher Should Possess (before the emails start: that does not mean you have to use technology to be a good teacher!) [see previous post]
Food for thought!
Recent happenings with your colleagues and what is going on in their classrooms:
Mrs. Allen’s sixth grade class is researching the Civil War via a web quest and the end result will be a scrapbook presented to “President Lincoln”. Future plans include a video project with Mr. O’Donnell’s class where students will be “reporting” on “recent” Civil War battles.
Mrs. Barrett’s first graders learned word processing skills by typing reports on amphibians, reptiles and mammals and imported pictures from Word Clip Art. Also, other teams made Wordle pictures by naming all the different examples of each category of animal. You can see their work on the bulletin board outside her door.
Mr. Greishaw (Math specialist) will be working with Voicethread reviews in Math classes. See his work below:
Mrs. Hawkin’s students are reviewing for the Math SOL by making Voicethreads also.
Mrs. Craig’s students are continuing their blogging in class.
Mrs. Santora gave up a Saturday to attend the ActivVirginia (Promethean) conference in Richmond and came back with a wealth of ideas!
Mrs. Nutt and I presented at the ActiVirginia conference. See our presentation here: Go.
Olive Branch second graders and Mrs. Diddle are reviewing for the Social Studies SOLs by using ActiVotes in room eight.
Miss Webb took her students on a Virtual Field Trip that she created for reviewing her most recent SOL in preparation for the tests in May.
Mrs. Brewster’s fifth graders will be learning through their lunch period by taking data on decibel levels in the cafeteria and will graph results using Vernier science equipment. They’ll also be using Excel to graph final results and find the mode and median levels.
Mrs. Diddle’s third graders are using the PPS Library Media Services link to research Explorers. Their end product will be a poster from each student sharing the information that they have found out. Moreover, students learned about short cuts by using the right mouse button (right click) and saving to the H drive.
Olive Branch finally has a computer lab, thanks to Mrs. Holt. Check her website to sign up for a time. Need ideas? See me!
Mr. McDonald has been teaching students how to create works of art on laptops with paint programs.
Mrs. Polencheck and Mrs. Froehlich are becoming Jeopardy gurus by reviewing money SOLs with PowerPoint games found online.
Mr. Doran has been working with Orchard with his classes.
Mr. O’Donnell’s sixth graders have been using Excel to have students track data and entering functions to track range, mode, and median.
Mr. Polito has been building flip charts for his Math classes and has discovered the benefits of Promethean Planet.
Mr. Haugen’s sixth graders are researching Civil War battles by using Wikipedia and will report to the class their findings.
Mrs. White, Promethean Guru, continues to wow and amaze everyone with her technical skills!
Miss Laughlin will be sharing resources for parents at the PTA meeting with the COW cart Tuesday night.
Mrs. Austin has been busy with her Quia site for her fifth graders and is able to track data for remediation purposes.
There are a lot of great things going on in our buildings!
What’s a 21st Century teacher do in his/her classroom?
A friend of mine has passed on to his eternal reward and is now dancing on streets of gold after a victorious fight with an enemy. Dan fought a noble fight against an enemy named cancer. In December of 2007, after going to the doctor about why he felt so poorly (he and his wife were going on a cruise soon), the diagnosis ended with him hearing that he had stage four Melanoma and was given six months to live. The six months turned to two years. Dan often said, “What a gift to be able to prepare my goodbyes to my wife, family, and loved ones!” Always the one to cheer others, he left a legacy of how to live life to the fullest and prioritize it.
While I wish I could write a tribute to him (a public school technology blog, remember!), I have spent the late afternoon reading his blog as a way for me to remember his life and his gift of himself to those around him. As I read, I was overwhelmed with what technology has left me: his blogging is letting me visit him as if he were right here saying, “Hey! Look Above!” What a gift to leave his family a blog as a reminder of who Dr. Dan was! Although I could write much more in regards to him, one tribute that I’d like to acknowledge is how he used technology to keep his memories alive for his family.
I also read the links to his daughters’ blogs which made me think of the heritage for the future generations to read about this amazing family. Just the other night my daughter asked me, “Dad, if you could travel back to ANY time in history, what would it be?” My first response, even before contemplating, was, “I’d go back to meet my dad.” He died when I was 18 months old and I have no memory of him. I have some pictures, but no letters, no personal thoughts, or anything that gives me a snapshot of him. I have heard nothing but praise from those who knew him, but I only have their words about dad to go by. Oh, if I could have a blog to read that my father had left behind like Dan’s — I could get a snapshot of his thinking, his personality, his being! All I have is a picture to look at. I’m thankful to know he was considered a good and ethical man with the highest of character. Dan’s grandchildren will have grandpa with him for many generations.
Consider what legacy that you can leave and how to give the gift of yourself to your family’s future generations. Don’t only think of technology as a school based purpose, but also as a personal one. I think of one movie making workshop I gave, and for one participant’s project, he chose to film his grandmother. The house that she raised her children was soon to be torn down, and realizing the importance of capturing this, he sat grandma on the steps of the boarded up house, set up the camera on a tripod, and filmed her talking about her memories. He rendered the video, put these on DVD’s, and gave them to the extended family as presents. She is gone now, and look how her legacy continues through technology!
Bye, Dan. Thanks for the gift of your life.
And now, if you excuse me, I’m going back to read the posts for 2009.
_____
If you wish to read Dan’s blog, please let me know.
Have you ever wanted to record students’ voices on a computer but felt it was too much bother setting up microphones? Digital Voice Recorders are now available for your use! These are tiny pocket held recorders with a lapel mic that puts your students at ease. We can either check out a whole set or we can use mine. As an example, I made one to go with the map below. Questions? Let me know!
Indian_Podcast [excuse my cold!]
Once in awhile, as you have your cruise control set on the Web 2.0 Highway, you can glance over and see something on the side that captures your attention:
Noteflight: “Noteflight® is an online music writing application that lets you create, view, print and hear music notation with professional quality, right in your web browser. Work on a score from any computer on the Internet, share it with other users, and embed it in your own pages. Noteflight is free for individual use”. This looks like something that musically inclined students may enjoy as they create their own music
100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner
“For those unfamiliar with the term, a learning style is a way in which an individual approaches learning. Many people understand material much better when it is presented in one format, for example a lab experiment, than when it is presented in another, like an audio presentation. Determining how you best learn and using materials that cater to this style can be a great way to make school and the entire process of acquiring new information easier and much more intuitive.”
Many in both buildings have expressed an interest in restarting our Promethean Users Group. Besides learning about how to USE the software and equipment, there are also tricks that can make your resource hunting easier. Did you know that you can import Smartboard lesson ideas/resources?
1) Go to SmartBoard’s resource site for state curriculum standards
2) Download the resource to a destination of your choice (i.e. Desktop)
3) Open Inspire. When the dashboard opens, click the Import from Smart Notebook
4) You now have another SOL resource!
(Did you know Promethean has a blog?)
Why is it that two hours can go so fast? Here are the links and information that we talked about:
What is Web 2.0?
Here’s a corny explanation of what Web 2.0 is:
DELICIOUS
To create an account, click here. Make sure you add the Delicious tag to your IE toolbar!
List of Web 2.0 sites from David in Henrico: Go
Museum Box [If you want an account on this, email me!]
The new style of presentation: Prezi [what my presentation was done on]
AND, the final YouTube that we couldn’t watch!
Although I’m posting this before our workshop on Web 2.0 for Social Studies next week for Tech Tuesday, here’s the video that we’ll be/did show about innovation in the classroom:
